Saakashvili’s lawyers say time for hearing on pre-trial restrictions not yet announced

Saakashvili’s supporter David Sakvarelidze noted that the term for politic’s detention expires tomorrow

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KIEV, December 10. /TASS/. Lawyers of former Georgian president and ex-governor of Ukraine’s Odessa and now the leader of the Ukrainian opposition Movement of New Forces Mikhail Saakashvili, who was detained in Kiev on Friday, said on Sunday evening they still have no official information when a court session on pre-trial restrictions would be held.

"The term for Saakashvili’s detention expires tomorrow, on December 11, at 22:00 (23:00 Moscow time). Before that time, the court is to decide on pre-trial restrictions. So far, we have received no official information about the court session. They seem to be plotting a surprise: the announcement may come some three hours before the beginning," David Sakvarelidze, Saakashvili’s supporter and former Ukraine’s prosecutor general, wrote on his Facebook account.

Earlier in the day, Saakashvili’s supporters staged a March for Impeachment. The started from Kiev’s Shevchenko Park to march to the Independence Square where they held a rally. According to Kiev’s police, about 2,500 people took part in the protest rally whereas the organizers said it had brought together more than 10,000. After the rally, the protesters walked down from the central Independence Square to the detention center Saakashvili had been taken to following his detention on Friday.

Saakashvili was detained on Friday evening on charges of his reported assistance to a criminal organization. Prosecutors want him to be placed under home arrest. Overnight to Saturday, Saakashvili said he was going on an indefinite hunger strike.

On December 5, police tried to take Saakashvili into custody at the tent camp in central Kiev, but his supporters put up fierce resistance to the police and managed to have him freed.

After that, Saakashvili staged a rally in front of the building of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, or national parliament. The protesters demanded resignation of President Pyotr Poroshenko, the Prosecutor General’s Office and Security Service top officials and insisted the parliament consider impeachment law on that very day.

Ukraine’s prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation against the former Georgian leader into the attempted crime, committing a crime with a group of individuals and complicity with criminal organizations and covering their criminal activity.